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Lessons I Learned from My SEO Manager Position

This entry was written by one of our members and submitted to our YouMoz section.The author's views below are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz.

During the last three years I have been the search engine optimisation (SEO) manager of a leading Ecommerce agency based in Paris. I had the opportunity to deal with top fashion brands and with a bunch of big pure-players due to my position and SEO knowledge. As you might know, SEO is not an exact science; and sometimes when you drive an SEO strategy, it's not always easy to explain how Google works to a marketing director or to someone else in the board of government. I though it might be useful to share some situations I faced as the SEO manager in Paris.

To ensure everybody is comfortable after publishing this, I won't give any names.

Scene one: "I dislike Google hegemony"

One day, one of my prospects refused to use Google Analytics because he didn't want Google to use its data and share it to competitors!

Client statement

"I want to have a robust tool to track data on my website, but I don't want to use Google analytics because Google is everywhere on the Internet and I will not be happy if my competitors have access to my data"

My answer

Google Analytics is a web analytics tool, which tracks data anonymously. The tool helps websites owners to understand how users engage with your website and Google doesn't record the name, email address, billing information etc. of your users. Websites owners have a total control of data they share on Google analytics and Google collects a huge amount of data with the help of variety reports.

Outcome

The client currently uses Google analytics as tracking tool and he is very happy, especially since Google analytics added recently social tracking features!

Scene Two: "I want to be first on my brand searches"

In 2008, I went to a meeting. The goal was to help a famous brand to recover rankings on brands keywords.

Client statement

"I was the first one to sell this product on this market. People come from around the world to buy my goods, but I can't understand why Google doesn't show my website first when searchers perform queries with my brand's name. For that I hate Google and I'll give them a call to obtain top positions."

My answer

Google and others search engines try to give the best answer to a searcher based on a combination of several factors, even if you use Google Adwords. Some of these factors include; if you have the best offer and if people are happy (and link to your page), if bloggers and press write regularly about your brand… So if you want to obtain good rankings on your queries, you should improve the content of your page by adding relevant keywords first, attract links from big players, and you must be sure that when users reaches your website they really enjoy your content and share it.

Outcome

The client did not consider my reply, and I lost the deal.

Scene Three: "I don't want to use this keyword on my website"

In general, it was pretty straightforward to expose my SEO strategy to people with SEO skills or a good web culture, but those guys don't make any of the big decisions. Thus, I need to clearly explain my strategy to the top management and particularly to the VP of Marketing; and trust me it's not easy.

Client statement

"We have a premium position on the market and our clothes are expensive so our targets are young mothers with good incomes. You should never use any "cheap" keywords (e.g. "brand +cheap" or "product +brand +cheap") in our pages' content."

My Answer

Dear madam, it seems like you have a clear view of the situation in your market and your market position is clear enough for me. However, I have observed in the keywords reports of your tracking tool that searches with the keyword "discount" or "cheap + product" or "your brand + deal" rise regularly. That means a fraction of your customers think that they could find good deals on your site! You need to satisfy them too. So my recommendation is to add a "good deal" section on your website, so that we could optimize the content and internal link structure of the website, to help those who look for good deals.

Outcome

That year, the client didn't follow my recommendation. But a few months later, she asked to my team to set up a "good deals" page because their main competitor performs well on this kind of queries.

Scene Four: "I will sign with you if you ensure me that I will be number one on Google"

This is my favourite one, because I have always lost prospects with this state of mind. Generally, most people concerns are "short-term" oriented.

Client statement

"I want to be number one on Google for this query (a generic one). I will not deal with you if you don't guarantee me that I will rank first"

My answer

Sir, Google's algorithm changes regularly. Last year they reported that they had made some improvements of the algorithm more than 500 times, so if you think that there is someone outside there who knows Google's secret sauce; please I will like to encounter him too. That said, you need to focus on metrics like, visits on a given keyword rather than on rankings, or you should use KPIs like sales, commerce conversion rate, number of page per visit, feed subscribers, etc.

Outcome

This client didn't sign the SEO agreement because he didn't trust in my ability to deliver. Anyway, I have improved the way I tackle this kind of objection since I read this article from Neil Patel on SEOmoz, Lessons Learned from Running an SEO Agency.

Scene Five: "SEO is automatic, and I will be first on Google SERPs without you"

A bunch of clients and prospects continue to think they don't need to hire SEO experts because they think Google employees decide alone which website will rank first and it is not necessary to hire someone who doesn't have the power to influence a Google employee's opinion.

Client statement

"Are you friends with Google employees or have you partnered with Google in the past for websites under your control? My conviction is that Google is automatic and decide how they rank websites, so if you're a "friend" with Google my website might be on the top three results of the first page"

My answer

There are many SEO agency which help pure-players and brands perform well on SERPs with good results. Google also shares a lot of information on the Google infrastructure and how they strive to crawl and index the web. Many websites, blogs, platforms, etc. try to be first on Google with good (white hat) and so call "bad" practices (grey hat) but its not so easy.

I also recommended that he watch this video to learn more about SEO (and I showed the Search Engine Land video about SEO to the client.)

Outcome

I won the deal and this man is my client for three years :)

I hope that the five real-life situations above will bring some fun into the vibrant SEOmoz community and that will really help young SEO players to be aware of these before facing the same objections from some "difficult" clients.

Thank you Mike for the time you took to read this "long" post. Neil stated in point #7 (pick a niche and dominate it) : "If I could turn back time, I wouldn’t create a SEO agency for just any type of online company".

To me that sounds like "Be a specialist" is a key in this SEO industry where content creation is virtually unlimited.

So nowadays, my answer is quite simple :

"...assuming that google algo changes regularly, and that i'm doing SEO only on Ecommerce space You (mister client) should trust me when i propose you to focus on your visits/sales, because i regularly achieve consistently good results with clients who have the same business model that you"

@Mike any suggestion based on your own experiences? I always try to improve.

One of very few posts where someone actually talks about losing a client. It's always better to commit to your standards for delivery rather than promise something you know you can't deliver. Kudos to your sir!

Thank you! I think people in the SEO space need to be clear with the client as much as possible! It's always better to keep a good relationship with clients specially when you're doing SEO; which is not an exact science. Sometimes when they are happy about your job, they can easily refer you to others, etc.

I salute you for your honesty. Not everytime do you find SEOs talking about failures. Well, little do people realize that there are no failures but experiences. I loved the way you let those "clients" go, sometimes you have to do it. And here's the thing, when you do something like that, it adds to your reputation. There are some SEOs who'd do anything for money. I don't blame them (we all need it right) but it would be good for the SEO community if we were all downright honest and straight forward. If you cannot rank them for a KW, let them know in advance, and give it a try. Nice article.

In the enterprise space, people are not always aware on seo and generaly about how search engines perform organic results. On top of that some VP are accustomed to buy traffic through banner ads, adwords, etc...

So sometimes they might think that google ranks results based on software engineers' opinions; specially when they misinterpret Matt Cutts statements (those about google panda for exemple)

Sometimes when I hear something that could be included on your cases list I feel like it's happening always just to me. It's nice to read about this from other SEOers from time to time. I'm shore we all feel better after.

Your journey as SEO manager is quite amazing as well as interesting. While dealing with different clients in my SEO field, I also came across such situation when clients explain their different type of unrealistic expectations. Your experience teaches us a lot of tips and tricks to deal with clients and to follow SEO techniques in different situations.

Thanks for sharing these situations, and I'm sure a lot of us can relate well to them. Personally, I find some of the situations quite frustrating over time as they do tend to repeat. I find the "top ranking guarantee" quite irritating as you are being more honest and ethical by not giving the guarantee. However (unfortunately), the client can very easily view it that you are not confident in your results. It's very unfortunate that this is the case. Giving "guarantees" within the SEO industry has always been considered dangerous as Google changes on a weekly basis.

Hi Franck - great post and very honest with your feedback. I've used a number of different tactics - this mainly depends on the person you are dealing with and adjusting feedback to at least get some kind of reaction e.g. Providing analytics and "easy to understand" measurement feedback for a non-SEO community has helped considerably

I think scene 4 happen with most of the SEOs where the clients ask for 1st rank on the first page on high competivie niches and sometimes it goes very hard to make them understand that it is not possible in a short time!

Good post! I think Managers providing real examples of their work and situations helps other SEO's in similar positions. It's amazing how many decision makers hate Google (analytics) without any real cause. I also run into people who think SEO is automatic and/or don't understand the long-tail keywords that actually drive conversions to their website.

I really did enjoy your scene four. I have had to deal with many clients over the years that wanted this. I have just walked away. I also have found many, on a similar note, that want to "pay per lead" via organic. This would be ok, but they have no system setup, and will not let you set one up, to track this. Again I find it best to walk away.

Yes, I completely agree. It's very frustrating when clients want that elusive "guarantee" which is difficult to give in the SEO world. It's important to educate them that SEO will always be a "moving targets" and that "rankings change every week". I often say that I will "use best practice methods that have worked for other clients" but guarantees are not what I provide. It's an on-going practice.

Working as SEO manager for a big european ecommerce, I read this post paying attention and I experienced myself many of the situations you said. I always tried to become SEO (for free, just to improve my skills) for other online companies, not in the fashion world, and I have to say many of them have difficulties to understand the importance of SEO for their brand. Thing is they believe SEOs are only there to play with Google, and to bring higher rankings. That could be even true, but I do think SEOs are there to help the company in many ways, because SEO in 2012 covers a lot of things, from rankings to social, to onpage optimization and so on.

I am a beginner SEO, but it is sometimes very difficult to explain what SEO can do for a company. I have to improve on this, and this post is helping me a bit to deal with different scenarios.

Franck! i really appreciate your honest review on the situation an SEO usually tackles. I would tend to add one point that clients sometimes are stubborn to rank on 2,3 keywords that are useless from revenue point of view. Or some even ask you to increase Alexa or page rank so in that case i usually answer them with a straightforward sentence "Alexa won't make you a better income but sales/conversions will do" so don't run behind alexa/PR or don't just ask your SEO guy to rank 2,3 keywords. The SEO may rank some others that can bring more sales/conversions for your business and ultimately you will get a handsome revenue.

Have been in touch with a client nowadays and trying to convince him on the same point i mentioned above.

Nice post there - I have lost a lot of clients in my time when I've gone into the non-scientific side of things

, but it is something a client has to understand and I think this is something to do with the nature of many small business owners - they often struggle to get their heads around being stuck in certain positions for a while, as they are used to driving the business forward by themselves.

I have encountered the same problems with my client (a famous car manufacturer in France), especially number 1 and 3.

I'm starting to wonder if this has something to do with the so called "exception française" :)

One manager even went as far as telling me "who cares about Google, there are other search engines and one day or another, we'll end up using european search engines. I don't wanna hear about Google anymore!"...

Every day is a p** in the a** here : every little modification (even meta tags) necessitates hundreds of validations, from people who have nothing to do with the search industry and a 15-page ppt presentation to justify the change.

It took me three months to install GA and and GWT (after the CEO of the company gave his permission).

And just so you know how much SEO is important in the company : I was the first one ever to do it... they didn't have any SEO strategy before.

I was the first SEO for my company and ran into scene 3! My manager objected to the term "cheap" even though it proved a valuable search term for their market. I think it should be made clear to clients/managers that our opinions of the keywords don't matter-it's all about the demands of your market.

Very glad to hear that someone is speaking about failure in SEO. Your client requirements & your answers are totally & exactly to the point. Number four is I think common question which every other client is asking. They don't understand that ranking is nothing but converting is something which they should focus more. Was curious to know what you did to bring that brand keywords on ranking? I'm stunned that even on brand keywords your client is not ranking.